Thursday, October 18, 2012

Day 1 of regular exposures

Today I dropped Zo off at his first day of daycare. We finally found a place that we loved with enough diversity so that our little chocolate chip wouldn’t be the only little brown boy in the institution. By word of mouth, we found a quaint cottage-like Spanish immersion preschool run by super cute ladies from Venezuela and Mexico. He loved it during our tour and even attempted to hop out of my arms into the Director’s arms. He was so smitten that I ignored the many dripping noses of the cute 1 year old kiddos who would be in his future class.

This morning I dropped him off around 8:45am. And he was one of the drippy-nosed children. For the last 3 days he has been a sneezing, coughing fussy fuss-face. Top it off with a set of 12 month old immunizations and both parents with sore throats and sneezing and you have entered our purgatory. I have flushed and aspirated his nose so many times that he anticipates what is coming and gets his wail ready. He has woken up so many times in the past few nights that I haven’t been able to lay down for more than 5 minutes without hearing his coughing and whimpering. I can’t wait for this cold to be over so that we can officially begin sleep training him. Add a hectic Ward month with long nights and early mornings and all I can say is that I am so tired. I am so very tired.

As I walked out, painted smile on my face, holding back the tears welling up in my eyes, a cute cherubic girl smiled at me and motioned for me to hold her hand. The Director hurriedly waved to one of the teachers so that she could wipe away the thick yellow-green goo running from her nose, sliding down her face. The teacher laughed nervously, I shrugged knowingly. I have been around enough children to know clear, yellow, and green ooze is somewhat of a rite of passage. Thus began Day 1 of our son exposing others to his germs and his classmates exposing him to theirs. Here’s to a robust immune system! Here’s to my growing Little Man!

6 comments:

  1. Ah, the petri dish that is daycare! The way I see it, they will build up their immune systems and not get sick as much as other kids when they start school. Hopefully... Hope the first day goes well!

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  2. We had Stubble in a private home when I went back to work after his birth...then he hit pre-school the year before kindergarten. NONE of us was well for an entire YEAR - or at least that is how it seemed. Their immune system will be 'stimulated' sometime or another...better sooner.

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  3. Ah yes. I used to think having a cold was a big deal. Something that I hopefully only had to contend with 1-2 times per year. Post daycare, it's a way of life. I hear it gets better after a year or so. Until then, hang in there!

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  4. The first year of daycare we had 8 URIs, 1 RSV bronchiolitis, 1 coxsackie, 1 AGE. Second year 6 URIs and 1 adenovirus. By kindergarten, we only had one or two mild URIs (no fever) a year.

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  5. Hahah...we used to call it "kennel cough." It gets SO much better, but it's just not fun while you are in the middle of it.

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  6. Thanks everyone :-) Round 2 of his first day care cold. Improving cough but persistently runny nose and now Mom and Dad have Round 2 of runny noses. Ugghh.

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